Anger's Weary Burn
by StillWaters1
Summary: 7x17 tag. There was a reason Cas's trench coat was in the trunk while Bobby's flask sat near Dean's heart. And it wasn't the smell.


Title: Anger's Weary Burn

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Supernatural

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: 7x17 tag. There was a reason Cas's trench coat was in the trunk while Bobby's flask sat near Dean's heart. And it wasn't the smell.

Notes: I have never been particularly invested in Castiel's character, but one of the things that struck me in 7x17 was Dean's emotional response to seeing Cas again. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the writers did not ignore how deeply that betrayal ran. Since 7x01, anytime Sam brings Cas's name up, Dean immediately shoots it down (i.e. "screw Cas!"), as if he can't even bear to hear Cas's _name _because of what he did to Sam. While 7x17 was a bit too rushed to really get into all the emotional dynamics going on in the multiple storylines, the predominant ones I noted in Dean during his interactions with Cas were anger and a sort of weary neutrality – apparently not such mutually exclusive feelings after all. I'm sure many fans were upset at the idea of Dean leaving Cas behind at the hospital, but I thought it fit perfectly – not only on a practical level with the Leviathan issue, but also in being true to Dean's character. Besides the anger, hurt, and betrayal, there's the simple fact that Cas hurt Sam, something Dean traditionally responds to by either killing the offender or cutting off all ties, regardless of whether they were once considered a friend. This piece is the result of exploring those thoughts and observations further. I truly hope I did the characters and emotions justice. Dialogue quoted from 6x22 and 7x17 does not belong to me. Thank you for reading.

* * *

Dean: Someone did this to him.

Emmanuel/Castiel: You're angry.

Dean: Well, yeah. Dude broke my brother's head.

Emmanuel/Castiel: He betrayed you, this dude. He was your friend?

Dean: Yeah, well, he's gone.

(later, to Emmanuel/Cas)

Dean: You know, I used to be able to just shake this stuff off. You know, whatever it was. It might take me some time, but... I always could. What Cas did... I just can't – I don't know why.

(to Sam, at the end, outside the hospital)

Dean: Look, man, I get it. She's not our friend. We don't even _have_ friends. All our friends are dead.

~ 7x17 (The Born-Again Identity)

* * *

Dean figured he should be feeling a lot of things.

With Sam being hit by a car and dying of Lucifer-induced insomnia in a locked psych ward, wondering if _he_ should be locked up with his brother for thinking Bobby might still be around after how Mackey's phone number was revealed, Cas resurfacing as an amnesic healer who couldn't fix what he broke, friggin' Meg and an assload of demons choosing _now_ to show their ugly faces, Cas "shifting the problem" to get Sam vertical, leaving Cas in Sam's place with Meg babysitting, finally having Sam whole and at his side again (although let's see how long _that_ lasts – they'd been down this road before and Dean still didn't know what Cas meant by "shifting" rather than "fixing")…yeah, he figured he should be feeling….well…..pretty much _everything_.

And he probably _did_, on some level, with Sam – but the worry, terror, helplessness, guilt, and preemptive grief were all tamed with alcohol and channeled into the desperate action of familiar, "last chance" research.

Which left him with Cas.

Dean had to admit that his initial surprise at seeing the angel disappeared about as fast as Cas used to when confronted with a "big picture" question. For a seemingly Godless world, there was an awful lot of resurrection within the Winchester circle. And yet, for someone whose battered trench coat Dean had shifted from trunk to trunk for months, any hint of relief, joy, or resolution at seeing a presumed-dead friend again, alive and well, was gone before it ever had a chance to register.

If it was ever there at all.

Leaving Dean with one undeniable, all-consuming emotion. Anger. Anger at being face-to-face with someone who hurt Sam; an angel who didn't even know he _was_ an angel, let alone the horrors he had wrought. An angel living in blissful, amnesic ignorance, hailed as a healer, while Sam and Dean suffered an endless, living nightmare born of the disease he had callously inflicted. An anger augmented by the fact he couldn't outwardly rage at "Emmanuel", a tool he needed to fix Sam, for what Emmanuel's _real_ self had done. Anger apparently caustic enough to burn through Dean's carefully constructed exhausted neutrality in the car, until Emmanuel verbalized it for both of them, making Dean wonder if it was actually that anger – pure, resigned, purposeful, Dean Winchester anger – that eventually brought Cas's memory back; more so than Meg's prompting or smiting the demons at the physical gates of Sam's internal prison.

But when his memory returned and Cas was re-clothed in the sentimental mantle from the trunk, Dean didn't correct him when the angel said they hadn't parted as friends. Because it was true – Cas _was_ no longer a friend. There was a reason the trench coat was in the trunk while Bobby's flask sat near Dean's heart. But Cas still had a purpose; echoes of a promise as frayed as their entwined history: _"rest assured, when this is all over, I __will__ save Sam." _Maybe part of Dean _was_ waiting for Cas to come back and honor that oath, somewhere deep under the reflexive shouts of "screw Cas" anytime Sam so much as uttered the angel's name; thought it might help him get past the seemingly insurmountable betrayal, the one injury, in a life riddled with pain, that just wouldn't heal.

Or maybe not.

Because when Cas figured out a way to get around the irreparable wall and allow Sam a level of functionality that didn't require a constant battle with Satan, any gratitude Dean might have had was gone before he ever had a chance to feel it; reduced to ash by anger's vigilant burn. In the end, Cas's action wasn't a promise finally fulfilled – hell, it wasn't even _atonement_. It was someone who owed Sam and Dean for an unforgiveable offense making a small step in the right direction, but one not nearly enough to change the reason behind why Dean hadn't worriedly tried to stop Cas when the angel sat at a flinching, terrified Sam's side, and assured Dean, "it's better this way. I'll be fine." Or why there was no sadness, no second-guessing at leaving a hallucinating Cas behind. It simply wasn't enough, would never _be_ enough, to change the fact that Dean honestly didn't _care_ about Cas's wellbeing at that point.

Only Sam's.

For a man who practically _lived_ on guilt, dismissing Cas like that should have been enough to fuel Dean for years. Yet he just couldn't make himself feel guilty about _any_ of it. Not even about _not_ feeling guilty.

Maybe it was emotional overload, just too much to process, but with everything that had happened, all Dean was left with was a weary neutrality. Like things put right. An eye for an eye. A crazy for a crazy.

Neutral.

With, impossibly enough, a burning _crapload _of anger at the same time – more than enough to make up for Sam still being too damn exhausted to get pissed himself.

Because Dean was telling the truth when, in the shadow of the hospital where Cas was now committed, he told Sam that all their friends were dead; a truth as certain as how the angel had once been their friend, their brother, their family….and as unshakable as the fact that the moment Cas touched Sam's temple back in that alley, he had immediately ceased to be all three. In that split second, Cas had gone from "friend" to "that dude." The dude who betrayed him. The dude who broke his brother's head.

Cas broke _Sam_.

Now let Lucifer go and break _him_.


End file.
